Future arrangements for funding higher education

The system of higher education finance in England is currently under formal independent review. In this report, we have attempted to highlight some of the trade-offs that would be involved in reforming the current system of fees and loans applying to full-time undergraduate study.

All our analysis is based on simulations of the lifetime earnings of a single cohort of graduates who are projected to enter full-time undergraduate higher education in 2011 and to graduate in 2014 after three years of study, at the age of 22 in their first year after graduation. We assume all eligible students fully take up their entitlement to loans and fees.

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Last week the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, Vince Cable, suggested a graduate tax as a 'fairer' replacement for tuition fees in higher education. All the Labour leadership candidates - with the exception of David Miliband - have expressed support for this idea, as has the ...